Lace and Snow
by Kamasa Chan
Summary: In Bakuman... Shinta Fukuda must help Aoki Ko... with drawing panty shots. Really? Really. That in itself is a problem, isn't it? Be aware, there are slight spoilers for Death Note within


_**Disclaimer:** I do not own Bakuman. If I did, I would either be Tsugumi Ohba or Takeshi Obata, and I would therefore be a million times more über than I am right now. I would be an amazing writer (which I am not) or an amazing artist (which I am also not). Also, if I owned Bakuman, Eiji would have more panels. Why? BECAUSE HE'S EIJI, THAT'S WHY. _

_Without further ado (or rants), here is my fic~_

"More highlighting on that panel, Yasuoka, and put screentone number four on that thought bubble of Kiyoshi's for me."

"Right, I'll get on it."

"Oh, and fix that lettering over there, it's crooked."

"But you're the one who lettered it in the first place!"

"Just fix it for me, will you? I've gotta make a phone call, like, right now, and I'm not going to be able to finish this chapter if we waste any time."

Yasuoka set down his pen and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, grinning. "Didn't Yujiro tell you that it would be tough? He warned you about time, but you had to help her, you know…"

"Shut up," Fukuda scowled, furiously scribbling lines that would serve as Kiyoshi's hair. "I told you, I don't like the idea of working with Aoki Ko either, alright? I just… Argh, I can't stand the thought of her dropping out of competition with us, and I can't believe how Nakai treated her… The nerve, Yasuoka, the _nerve_…"

Fuming, he scratched lines onto the paper that served as a background outline. "Here! Fill that in."

"Well, what'll you do if she knocks you out of the top ten, huh?" Yasuoka asked, dipping his pen into the jar of ink next to him. "If Aoki Ko's _Time of Green Leaves_ or whatever it's called does better than _Kiyoshi Knight_ with the readers, we're in big trouble, man…"

"Look, I already had this conversation with Yujiro! Wait, why the hell am I telling you this, you were there too! Just… stop talking and help me get this done, okay? Sheesh," Fukuda snapped before hastily drawing a rough outline of a battle scene.

Finished with his highlighting, Yasuoka ran his hand along his mohawk before reaching for a sheet of screentones. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I'm just saying…" He picked a razor blade from the mug containing pens on his desk and began shaving off little bits of Screentone Four to fit Kiyoshi's bubble. "It's nice of you to help out Aoki Ko like that, and I get that you're doing this for the sake of… Team Fukuda, or whatever it was."

"Exactly, and if Kiyoshi folds because of this, it's on my head," Fukuda said. "I was fully aware of it when I offered to help her. I have no clue why I decided to do this out of the goodness of my heart—"

"Aha, that's why?"

"—especially after she decided to side with that Koogy idiot and his load of baloney called _Colorfusical_, but I just feel like I've got to do this." He whipped a ruler out of his desk drawer and held it at angles to his page before tossing it onto the floor. "Damn, I can't get this one edge straight…"

Yasuoka, finished with his screentones, rummaged around his desktop for correction fluid. "Why are you in such a hurry, man? It's not like Aoki Ko's going to blow you up if you don't contact her within thirty seconds—"

"You've read Death Note, yeah?" Fukuda interrupted, finally able to draw at the angle he needed. "You know that character who was in the Mafia, Mello? In my mind, Aoki Ko is exactly like him. She may look harmless, but she's ready to blow at any second. Look, they even have similar hairstyles!" He thrust his finger at a poster on his wall, nearly flinging the silver ring off his finger before pulling his hand back to anchor his sheet of paper. "Point is, it's nearly midnight, and if she complains to me tomorrow about keeping a lady waiting, I'm really going to lose it. I'd blow myself up."

"You've got to be kidding me," Yasuoka sighed, glancing at the poster of the manga character. "Besides, you're more like Mello, you've both got the mild form of rabies thing going on, you know? He owns a motorbike and wears flashy jewelry. Plus, Mello blew himself up."

"Ah, shut up and do your work, I'm not paying you to diagnose me with rabies," Fukuda growled. He finished drawing a few drops of sweat before yanking his phone from his pocket. "I'm finished with my pages," he told Yasuoka, throwing down his G-pen. "You do the backgrounds and whatever else you think they need. I've gotta deal with unpleasant things…" He sighed, hopped off his chair and grabbed a faxed copy of Aoki's new _name_ off his printer.

"Ugh… what the…" He snorted. "No wonder why this failed! This is crap!" He thrust the _name_ page at Yasuoka. "Look at this! Look at this atrocity! What kind of panty shot is this?!"

"Uh, careful there, Shinta, you nearly shoved a pair of bikini bottoms up my nose…"

"Don't you 'Shinta' me, Yasuoka, and what you have up your nose is none of my business. But what about this bogus panty shot?"

Yasuoka shook his head and waved Fukuda away. "How am I supposed to answer that? I don't read manga with panty shots. I know that you're into To-LOVE-ru, but—"

"Well, I think these are just wrong!"

"I bet so do a lot of girls who read about panty shots…"

"You see, this is why Aoki Ko needs my help. I already called her once about the problems she had, and she goes off and doesn't listen to me! These… Ugh, horrible."

Muttering a string of things wrong with the panty shots under his breath, Fukuda pulled a sheet of paper with Aoki Ko's phone number on it and dialed the numbers on his cell phone.

"Don't you think that Aoki Ko will take you to be a pervert because you know about panty shots?"

"You, Yasuoka, go stand in the corner before I shove this pen up your nose."

-o-

Aoki Ko sat at her desk, nervously turning her drawing around and around, tilting her head this way and that.

"No, no, that… I can't do that…" she mumbled to herself. She frantically rubbed out the panty shot with her eraser and bit her lip. She stood up from her chair and glanced at the corner of her room before furiously shaking her head.

She would never, never, never use her own underwear as models for her drawings. It was too exploiting, in her opinion. Then again, all panty shots were exploiting.

It was disgusting.

It was disgraceful.

But if she wanted to be a serialized author, it was what she had to do.

Aoki sank back into her chair and sighed. She had no other choice. She had lowered herself morally to drawing underwear for a children's comic magazine. So shameful.

She dared to glance at her cell phone, perched on her desk next to her work space. Nothing. Of course, nothing. That was just typical of Shinta Fukuda, wasn't it? He said he'd help, and yet he didn't so much as sneeze in her direction after promising that he would assist her.

Men.

No, no, Aoki thought, that wasn't kind of her. Fukuda was an author for Jump himself, with a series that did fairly well. He had to work hard to keep his manga in high ranks, even though _Kiyoshi Knight_ usually lingered around tenth place, and he risked the fall of his series when he said he would help her. They were rivals in the world of manga, obviously, but to prevent the collapse of Team Fukuda, as he so enthusiastically named it…

It was too much, considering how displeased Fukuda was when she praised Koogy for his Colorfusical. Thinking back, it was a bit of an overreaction, but…

Aoki set down her pen and propped her head in her hands. She closed her eyes. Nakai… was a revolting pig of a person. He was barely the man she had thought him to be. The Ishizawa guy that Akito Takagi introduced to her was even more revolting. Just the thought of him made her sick to her stomach.

And then there was Akito Takagi.

Aoki sighed again and toyed with a strand of her hair. Takagi was an understanding and sweet person, despite her initial thoughts about him. She had grown to trust him and like him. Maybe she liked him a little too much, but he was one of the only men in the world who she was able to trust. Aoki Ko valued his advice, and Aoki Yuriko valued his friendship. She would have gladly been his girlfriend, had he been single and had he asked.

But neither happened, and Takagi had actually proposed to his girlfriend. Rather than feeling jealous or hurt over it, Aoki had actually felt joyful when she heard him ask Kaya to marry him. It was amazing to her, actually. But now…

She had panty shots to draw, risqué panels and embarrassing moments waiting to be freed from her pen. Was this really all she had? The expectation to draw the underwear of teenage girls? How pathetic.

She gasped with surprise as her phone rang with Beethoven's 'Für Elise'. Shaken from her thoughts, the ringtone reverberated through her empty apartment. Aoki took a deep breath to calm herself and pressed the 'accept' button on her phone.

"This is Aoki Yuriko…"

"Yeah, I know, you gave me your number."

Aoki promptly turned pink and pursed her lips briefly. "Fukuda-san. Good evening."

"A lovely evening to you too," Fukuda answered sarcastically. "Although I think it's a bit too late for 'evening', don't you?"

Taking a look at her clock, Aoki was shocked to find that it was eleven already. "I—I didn't keep track of the time. I've been busy…"

"I should hope so, Aoki-jo, because you need to do some serious work."

Aoki missed everything Fukuda said completely by trying to figure out his words through the distracting background noise coming from his end. "Um, would you mind turning your… music… down? I'm sorry, I cannot hear you clearly…"

Fukuda sighed and shouted something to his assistant. A moment later, the background noise disappeared. "There, happy? Why is it that the girls are always like 'Oh my gosh, screaming rock music is so scary, turn it off, I'm going to get nightmares'? It's just music. For your information, I find those fluffy pop idols most girls like rather scary, myself. Ayumi Hamasaki and her own line of Hello Kitty products. Ew."

Aoki practically heard him shudder over the phone. "I… I wasn't scared, Fukuda-san, I was not able to hear you speak because it was too loud," she said briskly. "Anyways, have you come up with suggestions for me to use in my manga?"

"Straight to business, I see," Fukuda answered. "Not even a bit of casual chat? No comment about Hello Kitty products? Fine, then, have it your way. Let's start here…"

After a long pause, he sighed.

"Aoki Yuriko… You're sitting there blushing at your desk every time you draw a pair of panties, aren't you?"

Immediately, Aoki flushed. "H-huh?! What are you—? What does that have to do with anything?" she stuttered.

"It has to do with everything! What is up with your panty shots?! No, that's exactly it! All of your panty shot angles are UP the skirt!" Fukuda shouted, growing increasingly irritated.

"I-I don't have many options when it comes to shots like those, Fukuda-san, up is the only thing I can think of."

"But we've already discussed this! You, and your weirdly angled panty shots! When I called you yesterday, I pointed out this problem! And you're still drawing them like that! How many times do I need to tell you that this isn't going to succeed at all?!"

Flustered, Aoki had to fumble to keep from dropping her _name_ as she uncapped a pen to take notes with. "You don't have to yell, Fukuda-san…"

On the other end, Fukuda made a noise like an angry parrot and launched into a diatribe. Holding the plastic cap of the pen between her teeth and scribbling down things Fukuda was saying—or rather, screaming—Aoki wondered what Fukuda's neighbors were thinking at the moment, given that he was shouting at the top of his lungs about panties in the middle of the night. Well.

He was the one that was shouting, anyways. Not that she was being any more docile than he.

-o-

Frankly, Fukuda had to give Aoki more credit than he originally thought. He'd thought that she would regard him stiffly as he criticized her work, tell him that it was her work, not his, and hang up on him after telling him she needed beauty sleep or else her skin would lose its radiance or something.

No, he had it completely wrong.

Here they were at nearly midnight, shouting at each other over the phone about manga. Surprisingly, uptight and proud Aoki Ko was keeping up with him as he told him what he thought, as he gave her suggestions, and she even told him off for using the word 'ass'.

And he had actually apologized. Really.

"So, just change the stuff we talked about… and… uh… Soichiro wants to go out with her, but he's being too casual about it! Make him shyer about the whole dating thing, okay?"

"…"

Fukuda sighed. "Trust me, I know these things, I'm a guy, alright? Just edit things around and have it done by tomorrow."

"What?! Tomorrow?!" Aoki exclaimed. "It's going to be tomorrow in a few minutes! I can't—!"

"Then pull an all-nighter!" Fukuda snapped impatiently. "Look, you want to get serialized again, don't you? You're going to do the drawings and pictures, right? You've got to do whatever it takes to get that done, and if you complain to me about lack of sleep damaging your complexion, I will _eat_ you."

A long silence issued from Aoki's end. Fukuda expected that she had reverted to her old stubborn self, offended by his tone again. He sighed and prepared, amazingly, to apologize again.

"I'm not going to complain. I'm going to work my hardest on this _name_. Thanks."

Well, that had been unexpected. Fukuda ran his fingers through his hair and grinned. "Good girl."

"I'll try my best to fix my drawings like you told me to. I think that your advice will help me out greatly," Aoki said.

"Sure it will, Aoki-jo, sure it will, because who knows panty shots better than a guy, right? That sounds sorta perverted on my behalf, I know, but it's true." Fukuda shrugged. "Either way, I'm looking forward to how you make your manga, and I hope you do get serialized."

Aoki nodded, forgetting for a moment that her phone was caught between her shoulder and cheek and nearly dropped it. "Erm, thank you, Fukuda-san, for your time and for your support. I… I also hope that Kiyoshi Knight continues to do well for you, and I would feel terrible if your helping me got in the way of your success…"

Fukuda laughed. "Success? Come on, you know as well as I do that Kiyoshi's not getting any better. I was actually thinking of ending it and starting anew with something else, yeah? Ah, well, that's not important right now. So, in order for you to get a move on with your work, I think that we should hang up soon. I mean, not that I don't like talking to you or anything, but for the sake of manga…"

"Yes, yes, you're right, I need to get to drawing straight away," Aoki agreed. "Just… one more question, Fukuda-san."

"Hm?"

"Um… why do you know how to draw panty shots so well?" Aoki asked, clearly uncomfortable. Odds were, nine to ten, her face was red.

Fukuda, though, paid no mind. "Why? Because, like I said before, I'm a guy. To be more specific, I'm a twenty-three year old guy. I don't necessarily always know how to draw panty shots or things like that, but I do know what appeals to me, so that's what I go with. I'm not a lecher or anything like that, but I do have my preferences and if you get lucky, most of the male readers of Jump will agree with me. Don't worry, Aoki-jo, I'm not going to be like Nakai, or that Ishizawa dude and turn into a pig. I'm going to help you as much as a rival can to get you up where you belong, because we're all in this gamble called manga together. Just… trust me, yeah?"

Aoki paused again. "Yes, I do trust you. Thank you again for your help, and good night."

"'Night, and good luck." Fukuda snapped his phone shut and stole a glance at the digital clock on his bookshelf. 11:37 p.m.

"Well, now that you're done with Aoki Ko, I'm done with your pages," Yasuoka said, sticking his kabura pen back into the coffee mug on his desk. "You're nearly out of white ink, by the way. How'd it go over the phone?"

"Eh, better than expected," Fukuda answered, stretching his arms over his head. He headed to the bathroom and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. He began to search through its contents. "I think that pretty soon Aoki-jo will become quite the formidable author to beat. She's cooler than I thought originally, though. She actually had the gall to tell me that my drawings were awful. Can you believe it? Sure, she's done more shojo than shonen, but that doesn't give her the right to tell me her drawings are better than mine. I cannot believe she said that."

"Well, in her defense, when compared to the other authors who draw for Jump, your art sucks, Shinta."

Yasuoka very barely dodged the deodorant that Fukuda hurled at him and laughed. "Well, you've still got your series running while Ashirogi Muto and Aoki Ko's have both been axed. That's not something to really sneeze at. You're still going."

"Yeah, but out of Team Fukuda, I'm the only one who hasn't progressed at all since I've begun. _Crow_ has been made into an anime already, and Hiramaru got an offer to make _Otters 11_ into an anime, too. Hiramaru, that lazy… He sits around complaining all day about having to draw manga, but he's one of the more successful authors." Fukuda tossed toothpaste, soap bars and a hairdryer out of the cabinet before swearing angrily and digging in deeper.

"Uh, you okay there?"

"Why are you still here, Yasuoka? You said you're done; why don't you go home?" Fukuda snapped, his voice muffled due to him having crawled halfway into the cabinet. "I'm not going to pay you extra if you hang around after your work is done, you know."

"Yeah, I know, I'm just worried that you're going to break something. What are you looking for anyways? It's, like, midnight."

"I need to find my special shampoo and my hair dye. My roots are turning black again," Fukuda answered from within the depths of his cabinet. "I haven't dyed my hair in months. I only noticed how dark my hair got after I cut it yesterday."

Yasuoka raised his eyebrows. "But you're always wearing a bandana or something, no one can see your roots," he pointed out.

Fukuda sharply withdrew himself from the cabinet and stood up. He yanked the bandana from his head and tossed it to the floor. "I can feel this, Yasuoka, I feel it in my scalp," Fukuda hissed irritably before diving back into his cabinet.

Yasuoka, on the other hand, had to clamp his hand over his mouth to keep from guffawing out loud. Fukuda's head resembled Mount Fuji with its colors reversed, black on the top and white the rest of the way. Mount Fuji was blue, but still.

"Well, I wish you good luck with finding your hair dye," he managed to say with a straight face. "I, uh, I'm going home, okay? I'll see you tomorrow at, like, ten."

"No earlier than eleven," Fukuda corrected. "By the time I find my hair dye and use it, it'll be past midnight and a half, and I won't be able to get to sleep until one. I am not dragging my ass—butt—out of bed without at least ten hours of sleep since I didn't get any this week."

"….butt?"

"Go away, Yasuoka."

"Ha, ha, later, then."

Interestingly enough, Fukuda's hands found his hair dye and shampoo box the moment Yasuoka shut the door to the apartment. Fukuda, finally able to back out of the cabinet, straightened up and checked his reflection in the mirror.

His hair looked so stupid.

When he first dyed it, he had also thought it looked stupid. But now, he just thought that black hair didn't suit him as much as silver hair did. If anyone saw his hair in the state that it was in now, they'd never let it go. He didn't ever remove his head covering in public for a reason. If someone saw…

Especially if Aoki Yuriko saw…

No, he had to dye his hair now. He would never forgive himself if he let Aoki Ko make fun of him. He wouldn't subject himself to that kind of humiliation.

Then again, why did he care what Aoki Ko thought about him? He never gave a rat's ass—butt—about her and her thoughts before. Unless… these conversations about panty shots were getting to his head?

…Nah.

"You moron, Fukuda, do you really think that much of Aoki-jo?" he muttered to himself, reaching over to turn the water on in his shower. "Geez…"

No way in hell was he ever going to see her as anything else as a rival. He hated her, didn't he? Of course he did. Aoki Ko…

Ack. No way. No freaking way. Right?

-o-

The teapot on the stove whistled, and Aoki quickly turned off the flames under it to avoid bothering her neighbors. She opened the cupboards above her stove and pushed aside tins and boxes.

"Green… chamomile… jasmine… black…" she murmured as she read the labels of each one. She closed her eyes and pulled out a container of tea at random. "…jasmine, huh…"

Aoki sank the teabag into the mug of hot water she had poured and pulled the string up and down, staining the water a rich, dark gold. She closed her eyes and inhaled the flowery fragrance that curled out of the mug, the steam warming her face. It would be a long night, and this wouldn't be her only cup of tea. Still… she had to start someplace.

She sank down into her chair at her desk, set her mug down away from her working space, and picked up her favorite nib pen. She began to sketch, keeping in mind the advice Fukuda had given her, and was surprised when it actually helped her story flow. The _name_ quickly and smoothly poured onto the pages she drew on, and within an hour she had it finished. It had only taken her one cup of tea.

The clock on her wall read 1:26 a.m., much earlier than she'd expected to finish her _name_. Feeling strangely energized, Aoki began working on a manuscript, drawing with the same kind of flow that she had used when working on the _name_. It was the easiest work she'd done in what had to be months, and all Fukuda had given her were a few tips on panty shots.

Aoki Ko lifted the corners of her mouth and drew page after page without feeling even the slightest bit tired. After a few minutes of lines and strokes, the first page of her manuscript was done. Aoki set down her pen and looked out the window. It was dark outside, as expected, but the lights of Tokyo put a faint glow into the sky. Maybe it was the sun. She smiled.

"Maybe… Just maybe… I'll be able to see the sunrise today."

And thanks to one Fukuda Shinta, who pressured and shouted and worked her towards her dreams.

Aoki lowered her eyes for a moment and thought back to the first time she'd met him. She had thought of him as wild, as rude and crude and crass. But the other day when he had offered to help her after telling off the vile person named Ishizawa… Fukuda had looked like a hero through her eyes.

She quickly shook her head and resumed her work. Fukuda, a hero? An impossibility. She would never view him as more than a respected colleague, and a friend she could trust at most. Any more… no, he would always remain a rival, respectively. Right?

For the first time in ages, Aoki turned on the radio and hummed as she worked, glancing now and then out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun.

-o-

* * *

_Now is the time for my rather annoying but absolutely necessary endnote, A.K.A endparagraph, A.K.A. endpiece-of-writing-that-should-really-be-its-own-fic. So.  
The first thing I have to say about this fic is "It's about time." I've been reading Bakuman since it started serialization, yet this is the first fic about it that I've published. (Forgive the crappy writing in this one; even though it's the most recent one I've written, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing and I didn't really concentrate on it. Sorry.) Mind you, I have a bunch written and stored somewhere in my computer, but I'm too weenie-ish to post them. Or something._

_This isn't intended to be a pairing fic. You can think of it as one if you'd like. But then, what about the lines that are Fukuda and Aoki questioning their relationship? Well, those are just put in there for humor, awkward-moment effects, and my personal amusement. You may throw whatever rotting food within reach at me at this time. _

_For those of you who aren't really sure, Yasuoka is Fukuda's assisant with the red mohawk. I think that I made him and Fukuda sort of OOC. Being a Death Note fan, I turned them into Mello and Matt from that series, and I even went so far as to point it out in the fic. If you didn't read Death Note, the previous sentence made no sense at all to you, did it? Kamasa Chan here is a bad writer... But I couldn't help it! Going away from that a little, I'm not sure what kind of music Fukuda would like so I just had him listen to what I was listening to at the moment. (_Dir en grey_, in case you were wondering.) For future reference, the song that serves as my personal theme for Bakuman is _This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm On This Song _by_ System of a Down_. Have any of you seen the AMV called "Tints, Brushes, Passion, and Fishes" on YouTube? You should go watch it! (It made me giggle.)_

_That's about it for now. (Finally.) I hope you enjoyed reading this fic, and I want to post more Bakuman fics in the (near) future! I'd be very happy if you would review this story, and please keep in mind that I encourage flames! I've heard that they help writers learn. (Probably doesn't apply to me, but...) Thanks for reading, and keep in mind that any serious moment is the perfect opportunity to shove pencils up your nose while keeping a serious expression. (You've gotta love Eiji. You just have to. PS, cookies to you who caught the pun about Fukuda and up-nose shoving.)_


End file.
